One Month!!!!

Wow, I really haven't posted in a whole month. There has been so much going on, I don't even know where to begin.

The house-- we are settling in, and other than some organization projects and decorating, everything is together. I still plan on posting some pictures, but they are all on the desktop computer, which still isn't working quite right. Blinds are now up in every room, and everything is pretty much where we want it. Some rooms still lack some furniture, but over time that will be remedied.

Our town--Every day I just realize how happy I am that we moved to this town. There are so many family/community events here. It is truly an arts-centered town, so they are constantly having these amazing programs. For the town's 70th anniversery they have a letterboxing project. I had heard about letterboxing, but had never experienced it, and Randy and I are having as much fun as Danny finding the local letterboxes that celebrate the town's anniversary. The community center has art for pre-schoolers and monthly art projects. Last week, Randy, Danny and I made tin lanterns for our deck through a community sponsored event. Our new house is just a short walk from a beautiful lake. I have been walking regularly around the lake that is home to turtles, ducks, squirrels, foxes and lots of birds, fish and bugs. Such a peaceful place! Plus, our original draw is that we are minutes from Danny's pre-school. That will come in very handy when school starts back up!

Summer-- Randy's schedule has been more flexible. He has been working about 20 hours a week. What a great perk of all of those years of hard work getting that PhD! We have had time to do more fun things around town and in DC. We did go into DC to go to the National Gallery (the Friday before Father's Day) and to the zoo (July 7th).

Visitors-- Nancy and David came to visit from New Hampshire over the 4th of July. It was fun to show her our new place and just hang out and let the kids play. We had a great time! We made a trip to Port Discovery in Baltimore and watched an amazing fireworks display from our parking lot. It was great to have visitors!

Danny-- Danny has been out of school for over 5 weeks! He has had a few projects he's been working on around the house. He enjoys writing "newspapers" and delivering them to our new neighbors! Needless to say, we know many of our new neighbors better than we ever knew our neighbors at our last place! Danny is also enjoying making forts in our our living room. I have been very tolerant about the mess this is creating, but tonight we are going to have to get the stuff put away!

Annelise-- She is walking around like crazy! She really got going the week before we moved (May 28th-June 2nd). Keeping up with Danny is good inspiration for her to move quickly! Annelise had her 15 month appointment on June 18th. She measured in at 31 1/2 inches long and 22 lbs and 15.4 oz (mighty, mighty close to 23 pounds!). Unfortunately, she has had some medical issues related to her urinary tract infection. It is now common practice to run tests the first time a child has a UTI to make sure that there is 1) no permanent damage and 2) nothing physically wrong that could contribute to more UTI's. On June 20th we took her to Children's Hospital in DC to have a kidney scan. It was pretty involved and overwhelming, and unfortunately the results were that she does have permanent damage to one of her kidneys. The scan does not tell us whether anything is anatomically contributing to the UTI's, but it doesn't matter if there is already damage, because she is going to be on long-term antibiotics (probably a couple of years) to prevent further damage. We don't know if maybe she had previous UTI's that were never treated (she may have had a fever that was related to an ear-infection, or flu, and I never noticed the other stuff), or she only had this one really bad one. She is so tough and active (you saw the pictures of her in the ER, right?), so it takes a pretty good fever to notice anything is wrong! The antibiotics are really annoying, frankly. As some of you know from previous posts, the antibiotics usually give my kids diarrhea and with Annelise a nice yeast infection, but this is a much lower dose, so I haven't noticed anything in the last 2 1/2 weeks. The bummer is that she still has to take liquid medication and it has to be refrigerated and doesn't last longer than 2 weeks... so I'm going to be at CVS all the time! I can't wait till she can handle those chewables! Other than this she is a very happy baby! She has begun (once again) sleeping through the night. Hopefully she will stay healthy and sleeping through the night!

Anniversary-- Randy and I celebrated 9 years of marriage on July 11th! I can't believe we have been married that long (and that we have known each other 14 1/2 years!). So many changes in that time. I'm so grateful that we have so much fun together and that he makes me laugh so much. Plus, he is just a great husband and father.

Travels-- I didn't get to post pictures of our trip to New Hampshire, but we had so much fun at the end of May visiting the Felch family. They are in the country, let me tell you! Annelise and David actually slept a lot, so Nancy and I got to talk and watch TV together (it was season finale week, so we had lots of fun!). Nancy also showed me all the great little spots they have locally. We had fun going to a farm in Vermont that makes real maple syrup and cheese. So interesting (and delicious!). We can't wait to go back! And more travels... on Monday we are all headed to Hood River for a month. I am anxious to get out of the humid heat and to the dry heat. We are also excited for a different pace and time to visit with my parents. While we are on the west coast, Randy will be spending 6 days in the Bay Area to do some research at UC Berkeley and visit his family. Because he (and his family) will be working, I decided not to take the kids on this trip. It is much more fun to visit when we are all on vacation mode! That will be soon, because we all will be headed back to the Bay Area for Randy's brother's wedding in September!

Well that is the synopsis. Being off of the blog for one whole month does lend itself to a rather long post. Someday I'll get more pictures on here. Actually I can include more current pictures that are still on my card, so I might do that in the next weeks, but hopefully we'll get that desktop computer up and running!